


In Which Life and Death Have to Cooperate

by capitalfinch



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Capitalfinch's Mortal Gods AU, F/M, Keith is korean, Lance is latino, Life/Death AU, M/M, Mortal Gods AU, Multi, Omnipotence, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-10 00:52:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7823830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capitalfinch/pseuds/capitalfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keith is Death, Lance is Life. Together, they balance the universe in the palm of their hands, making sure that when somebody dies, a new life is born from the stardust of their essence. However, they're forced to take some accidental leave when Shiro decides the two hotheaded gods need to learn some humility. Before either of them can say "omnipotence" they're mortals on earth, left to deal with one another and cope with being just like everybody else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which Life and Death Have to Cooperate

**Author's Note:**

> This was gonna be a series but for now its just a drabble lol

Lance was exhausted. The boy had been a human teenager for approximately two weeks, and he was already done. Life was ready to fucking kill himself. It was strange, being a god, being Life, and no one knowing. No one knowing that he made the sun shine brighter, he made flowers bloom when he wanted, that he made babies cry (which is healthy…) when they’re first born. Lance had never felt so underappreciated in his life. He was trapped on Earth, with Death, with Keith, of all the goddamn people in the universe, with his rival and partner. The latino boy was used to being denied the attention he so obviously deserved from Death, but he tended to get along just fine because of how Shiro usually praised him, Pidge made snide remarks in his favor, and Hunk almost seemed to worship him. Lance thought it was perfectly reasonable for him to be a little full of himself. He was the god of Life! What’s more important than Life?

Apparently, Shiro thought differently. The older man had insisted that both Lance and Keith needed to learn to be a little less…..Lance and Keith. They needed to learn “humility”. Lance had said “isn’t the air pretty dry on earth?” and the entire crew had looked at him like he was an idiot, and Keith had said something along the lines of “that’s humidity, dumbass”. Whatever.

Life was disturbed out of his reverie when Keith emerged from his room in their shared apartment, completely ignoring Lance on the couch and going to make himself some cereal. Human food was disgusting, but they were coping. They may have exchanged a total of fifty words since they landed on earth a few weeks ago. Most of the time, they just coexisted in silence.

Lance was sitting on the couch reading his newspaper (even though he hated newspapers; he thought they were boring, but the news of mortals was drastically different than anything he’d ever read about before his time on earth), and Keith was leaning over the counter eating his cereal and nosily, blatantly reading the back of Lance’s newspaper.

“Oh,” exclaimed the god of Death after a few moments, slamming his bowl down on the table and causing the milk from his cereal to splash over the sides. Lance looked up, and Life and Death locked eyes with a chemical reaction that left butterflies in Lance’s stomach. He figured all opposite duos probably had enough tension to disturb an entire room just by making eye contact, as Lance and Keith did. Lance turned over his newspaper, skimming it over for something that might’ve caught Keith’s eye. There was a small square of an article about a murder, and Keith had that sparkle of morbid curiosity in his eyes.

“No,” Lance said firmly, as Keith looked ready to bolt for his jacket and sprint out the door before Lance could try to stop him. “Keith, no,” he repeated, and Keith pursed his lips in that sickeningly adorable Keith way of his. “Keith,” Lance said again, and Keith looked as if he was seriously considering jumping out of the window to check out the crime scene. Before Lance could even react, Death was booking it out the front door of their apartment, and Life cursed, shooting up and making a mad dash after him. He grabbed the keys and slammed the door shut behind him, not even stopping to check if it was locked before weaving through the morning crew of shuffling people who hadn’t had coffee yet to chase after the raven-haired boy. Was he planning on going on foot? It was only a few blocks away, he knew, but Lance wasn’t sure if he, himself, had the endurance to run the whole way.

Keith definitely seemed to, though, and when Lance staggered to the scene, panting and sweating from head to toe, Keith was already “investigating”. (Read: sticking his nose into things that definitely weren’t his business -- while he was mortal, anyway. Death had ALWAYS been his business otherwise!)

Keith had been ignoring Lance for ten minutes while the taller man stood there, hands in his pajama pant pockets. Keith spoke with officers and learned some details, piecing together a story. Keith wanted so badly to have taken whoever had died here, to have snatched them up and metaphorically weaved them into a beautiful gift for Lance, for Life, to give their soul another chance. All human beings are forged using elements that are only created in the cores of dying stars. Humans are built with stardust as a key ingredient. That stardust -- It passes through the universe before and after somebody’s life. Before, it belonged to somebody else. After, it will be gifted by Lance to an infant. That is how life works. It’s a cycle of the same stardust and beautiful elements of space coursing through different veins.

But the body was gone, the precious stardust had probably already been taken by Shiro, and gifted by the same, and Keith had never missed “work” so much. He wanted to go home. Death stared longingly at the untouched area of road where the body would have laid if it hadn’t been taken for inspection. It was morbid, but Keith longed to see it. He wanted to watch the life leave the eyes of the body like he usually did, and he wanted to see the twinkle in the irises of the infant who’d taken the cadaver’s stardust. He wanted to see how calm and disturbingly paternal Lance looked when he regifted used stardust, a used soul. Keith had been around when Lance was tenderly forging the first doses of stardust, the first sparks of life. He was there when Lance delivered it, and Lance was there when Keith took his first soul.

They were symbiotic, in a way: Keith’s job was collecting souls. In the process of taking a soul, the stardust, the rare elements that travel through human veins, leave with it. Keith takes both, delivers the elements to Lance, and keeps the souls for himself. He feels selfish, sometimes, but Death would never be successful if he let everyone keep their soul.

Keith was disturbed out of his monologue when Lance cleared his throat, and he turned around to look at the taller boy. He could see Lance fiddling with his fingers, wringing his hands, and Keith knew that Lance was anxious to get back to space as well. Lance wanted to bring about life. He wanted to make things glow, make things bloom, bring light and beauty to the universe. Keith wanted to make things die. He wanted to gently guide things out of the way, permanently, to pave the way for the beauty that he knew Lance would put in his wake.

How long were they stuck there again? Shiro never specified.

When Keith was done, he motioned Lance over, looking generally annoyed, and didn’t wait for Lance to follow he turned and began walking back to the apartment. Lance followed begrudgingly -- Not because he wanted to follow Keith of course! But because he was ready to go home and sulk until Shiro hopefully took pity on them and let them off of the hellhole called earth.

**Author's Note:**

> Doubt I'll add to this, but I'll keep this little drabble online.


End file.
